In addition to the Oracle documentation Firefox plugin and extension, you now have another easy and quick way to search Oracle documentation and other Oracle and non-Oracle related web sites.

Introducing Oracle Bookmarklets

A bookmarklet is a small JavaScript program that can be stored as a URL within a “bookmark” (or a “favorite”) in your browser. Bookmarklets are simple one-click tools that can add substantial functionality to the browser. Below you will find Oracle specific bookmarklets as well as other useful bookmarklets. They work in Firefox and Internet Explorer.

I have successfully tested the bookmarklets in Internet Explorer 7 (RC1). The installation is similar to IE6. However, for the bookmarklets to work properly you may need to disable IE7’s built in pop up blocker and tweak the default security settings, otherwise you will have to explicitly allow the bookmarklet script to run everytime you use it.

How to use the bookmarklets

The bookmarklets below can be used in two ways:

If you select (highlight) text on the web page you are browsing and then click on the bookmarklet on your toolbar, the corresponding search for the selected text will be performed and the result displayed in a new window (or tab).

If you do not select (highlight) any text on the web page you are browsing and click on the bookmarklet on your toolbar, you will be asked to type in your search terms and then the corresponding search for the entered text will be performed and the result displayed in a new window (or tab).

Google recently announced the addition of OneBox functionality to their search appliance, which means that you can find just about anything through the familiar Google search box, including information stored in your corporate ERP system.

Google launched an initial set of OneBox modules with Oracle, Cognos, SAS and Salesforce.com.

According to Oracle, If you are an Oracle E-Business Suite customer, with Google OneBox for Enterprise, you are able to access key information from human resource (HR), enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), and supply chain management (SCM) applications.

Before being able to search Oracle E-Business Suite, there is a sign-on process that guarantees user authorization and authentication prior to accessing secure enterprise data.

Steven Chan, Director of Applications Technology Integration at Oracle reports that E-Business Suite search results are returned in XML format and merged into whatever other data Google finds from other sources.

Peter Heller, Senior Director, Oracle Applications Product Marketing, discusses with Cliff the new relationship between Oracle and Google, why companies want search in their enterprise applications and why this is so exciting for Oracle application customers. Listen.

Note that you need to login to Metalink in order to get results. Once logged in – and as long as you do not exit your Firefox browser – you do not need to keep the Metalink site open and you do not need to log in again every time you search. Enjoy!

Even though the “Format results into a virtual book” has always been an option for displaying Oracle documentation search results, I have never paid attention to it until Tom Kyte mentioned it in his latest podcast. After trying out this option a couple of times, I noticed that it could easily be converted to a Firefox search plugin. Unlike my other Oracle documentation search plugin, this one is version specific. I have created three search plugins, one for Oracle DB version 8.1.7, one for 9.2 and another for 10.2. The result of the search is directly formatted into a virtual book.

I successfully tested the Oracle documentation search plugins on both Firefox 1.0.7 and 1.5 (Beta). I noticed one difference though, which is not related to how the search plugins work but to where each FF version installs them. the plugin files in FF 1.0 were stored in the FF installation directory (usually C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\searchplugins), whereas in FF 1.5 they were stored in the user’s profile directory (usually C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles...).

Finally, it seems to me that if I use the same search string to search the documentation for versions 8.1.7, 9.2 and 10.2, version 9.2 always produces fewer (virtual book) results than the other two. Consider the following examples: Continue reading…

In case you have not heard already, Google has just launched a blog search engine. From the Google FAQ:

Results include all blogs, not just those published through Blogger; our blog index is continually updated, so you’ll always get the most accurate and up-to-date results; and you can search not just for blogs written in English, but in French, Italian, German, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese and other languages as well. … Blog Search indexes blogs by their site feeds, which will be checked frequently for new content. This means that Blog Search results for a given blog will update with new content much faster than standard web searches. Also, because of the structured data within site feeds, it is possible to find precise posts and date ranges with much greater accuracy.

Up in the top right corner of Firefox, there’s a handy search box that puts search engines at your fingertips. When you download Firefox, a number of searches (like Google, Yahoo, and Ebay) are included but you can easily add more.

Because I find myself quite frequently using tahiti.oracle.com to search the Oracle documentation, I created my own Firefox search plugin to do just that, search the Oracle documentation. You can download, install and use my search plugin from here. The search plugin will only work in Mozilla Firefox. If you do not use Firefox, now is a great time to switch and use this great browser along with the other 75,000,000 users.